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When danger strikes: A linguistic tool for tracking America’s collective response to threats

Author

Listed:
  • Virginia K. Choi

    (a Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742;)

  • Snehesh Shrestha

    (b Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742;)

  • Xinyue Pan

    (a Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742;)

  • Michele J. Gelfand

    (c Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305)

Abstract

People are constantly exposed to threatening language in mass communication channels, yet we lack tools to identify language about threats and track its impact on human groups. We developed a threat dictionary, a computationally derived linguistic tool that indexes threat levels from texts with high temporal resolution, across media platforms, and for different levels of analysis. The dictionary shows convergent validity with objective threats in American history, including violent conflicts, natural disasters, and pathogen outbreaks. Moreover, fluctuations in threat levels from the past 100 years coincide with America’s shifting cultural norms, political attitudes, and macroeconomic activity, demonstrating how this linguistic tool can be applied to understand the collective shifts associated with mass communicated threats.

Suggested Citation

  • Virginia K. Choi & Snehesh Shrestha & Xinyue Pan & Michele J. Gelfand, 2022. "When danger strikes: A linguistic tool for tracking America’s collective response to threats," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 119(4), pages 2113891119-, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:nas:journl:v:119:y:2022:p:e2113891119
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